Newest Marketing Method: Sue RIM For Patent Infringement

from the things-you-didn't-learn-in-b-school dept

Poor old Research In Motion: it can't quite shake off NTP's patent-lawsuit money grab, its got a bullseye on its back as all sorts of rivals take aim at it, and now it's being used as a marketing pawn. At least that's what the latest patent lawsuit filed against it sounds like. Some startup alleges the BlackBerry 7100 device infringes on its patent covering some aspect of predictive text, with the company's CEO saying, "The problem is that the RIM 7100 is good, good enough to infringe the patent, but not good enough to create a new standard for mobile text entry. That's why we have to stop it now and hopefully convince RIM and others to introduce new devices which implement the technology properly." That sounds like a long way of saying "ours is better, but they didn't want to buy it, so now we'll sue". Apparently replacing sales people with lawyers is one way to drive up revenues. Of course, all this could just be karma coming back around on RIM, which has had its patent lawyers on speed dial for some time.